Uberpedantic indeed, sirrah!

"This may be overly pedantic...

By Anonymous Coward

Posted Tuesday 1st July 2008 09:44 GMT

...but 'Roman' wasn't a race.

The citizens, and soldiers, of the Roman Empire were from all reaches of Europe.

The ethnicity of any 'Romans' in Britain is therefore uncertain."

Roman wasn't a race, you're right. Many of the Roman troops that invaded England under Claudius were German, of course, so work that one out. Rome was the place all roads pointed at on most legionnaire's Chariot-Navs, of course. It was the Romanisation of Britain that changed it all and that continues to affect us today.

Anyway, woss this got to do with IT?

Genome

I agree with B Shubin. However, this morning I have taken out copyright on every word and phrase in every language on this and every other planet.

You can write to me to complain about this, of course, but I will be charging for every word you write.

In the interim, I'd like to believe that any British judge would have dismissed the entire case as the crock of crap it clearly is, and thrown a whole bunch of costs at MercExchange for wasting court time, trivialising the law, opportunism... Oh, and being a bunch of tossers (not sure that's an offence in civil or criminal law but what the hey).

I must stop writing now as my lawyer says I have to invoice myself for all these words, and I ain't got a bean.

I suspect that God is not an American

The UK has enough problems of its own making without needing to point fingers and throw sticks at the USA, but I find that America's fundamental Christianity concerns me more than the Islamist variety elselwhere in the world. For a lot of folks around the globe, the USA's oft-touted 'Freedom' and 'Democracy' actually represent nothing more than what America believes is its inalienable right to foist its policies and 'philosophies' upon an ungrateful world. As soon as I hear any politician hint that God is on his or her side, I reach for the sick bag and the tin hat (it pays not to confuse those two, let me tell you).

I've only met one American who admitted to voting for Bush (then again, fewer of you voted for him than for Al Gore) and every one of them confessed to being embarrassed about their so-called Commander in Chief.

Don't know who's going to be the next Prezz but they'd better be a peacenik Democrat or the world is going to go dayglo one day soon.

Less sophosticated?

"Thus, the Mac is pretty successful among less sophisticated users" Keith Doyle

Firstly, and just to respond to Mr Doyle, who chooses above to dismiss Mac users as 'less sophisticated', to you, sir, I say pish and quite probably tish. I used to use Windows machines each and every day and I thought the faults, the hiccoughs, the hangs and crashes, were what computers did. I could fix most of the problems myself, way back in DOS 3 (I think) and Windows 3.1 days. My introduction to the Mac (then on System 7.1) was a revelation, and I have used Macs ever since. In my office there are four PCs (two on Vista, which is very funny and makes me laugh a lot, and two on XP Pro) and my two Macs. Pretty much every day is punctuated by the cries of frustrated Windows users - and I'm the one who ends up trying to make them work properly.

My wife has two PCs; a laptop running XP Pro and the other, XP Home. She has so many problems with these wretched machines, in part because she has managed over the years not to learn a thing about computing in general and Windows in particular. Windows did not become the biggest because it was the best; they did the best deals, courted the right clients - corporate, government, education, etc - and grew like Topsy. If Steve Jobs had got his finger out and arranged for PC games to play better on Macs, Apple would have taken over the world by now.

These days, even the IT professionals I bump into have limited success with the machines they are supposed to know so well. Nearly all of them say they would prefer a Mac but Windows is where the money is. All those unsophisticated PC people, see, with not a clue what to do, the lambs, but plenty of bucks to get their benighted Windows up and struggling again. Sure, one or two of you PC users out there know what to do, but most of you are, I suspect, happy to bumble along with your four-year-old OS and your ghastly beige boxes.

In the words of the PC prophet: Eat poo. 12 billion flies can't be wrong.